Title: Data Driven Product Management: product management meets devops

Abstract:

Description:

It’s hard to be a successful software company today: sure, lean startup told us to build MVP’s,* Open Source* and the Cloud provides us with building blocks galore to build and run large, complex applications, the DevOps community gave us plenty of tools and insights to make sure these large apps run smoothly. All this makes it easier to build and launch a good software product. No wonder that today’s users are spoiled with gorgeous apps that are available 24x7, for (almost) free. That’s why a modern software company needs to “design for valorisation”, i.e. actively design, implement, test and measure how they make money. Take games like Clash of Clans: these “free to play” games contain many mechanics that keep players play. By buying virtual money via in-app purchases, players speed up their progress. Behind the scenes though, this whole experience is measured, analysed and fine-tuned to ensure that players don’t get too annoyed with the slow, unpaid progress, yet are incentivised enough to buy the credits. For Netflix, operating in a very competitive market, with a technical infrastructure that is far from trivial, every $7.99 counts. That’s why they listen so much to customers, and why their customer support is stellar. [Remember this Star Trek story?] (http://imgur.com/e0LcT6J) Setting up a working designing for valorisation strategy requires strong analytics, a lot of data science, experiments and probably above all, a strong view on how users experience your product or service. This is traditionally the role of software product manager. In this talk, we’ll discuss how IMHO a modern (SaaS) software product manager should look at her job, how she can leverage DevOps practices on the product level and I’ll end with some tips and advice on how to start.